How to lose up to 5 kilograms in 10 days. But I do strongly recommend that you read the fine print.

I am here to tell you about a little weight loss secret.

Forget the Atkins diet and the cabbage soup.

Forget the CSIRO diet and protein shakes.

Forget about Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig.

Forget about eating a tapeworm or those pills that stop you from digesting fat.

If you want to lose weight, fast, cheaply

I strongly recommend a good dose of Salmonella.

It works wonders.

That is all.

(textbookofbacteriology.net)

The fine print...

Oh, you are still reading.

You want to know more?

Ah, yes.

Completely understandable.

Well, yes, it is a tad more unpleasant than counting calories and spending an hour exercising each day.

Well, yes, OK, it is a lot more unpleasant.

You could well go from feeling completely normal to rocking back and forth

on the bathroom floor with chills, uncontrollable shaking and nausea and cramps within an hour.

You might well spend the next two days in bed

unable to even watch television,

tossing and groaning, alternating between chills and fevers,

with a constant headache and gastrointestinal cramps.

Your partner may well move into the spare room for a week,
running away from the germs and the tossing and groaning.

The cat may follow him.

You could find that you don't sleep or eat for the best part of a week.

That your brain wont shut down and you feel like you are going through some LSD experience 

at a 1960s party every time that you close your eyes.

You might tell your husband that you are not having any more children,

no argument,

which would appear perfectly logical to you in the middle of a toxic episode

even if not to him.

(think along the lines of "Oh crap. This is so awful.

Will I ever remember how bad this was after the event?

It's like child birth.

Now I remember how awful that was.

I am not having any more children,

even if I am already too old and hubby has had the snip.

No more children. You hear me? 

You hear me?")

You might write a letter to John Barrowman in your head,

apologising to him that you were not having lustful thoughts about him at the moment

but that he shouldn't take offense because you also weren't lusting after your husband or chocolate

at the moment either.

You might even feel so bad that you remember thinking that you wouldn't wish this on

the deceitful, malevolent individual who has made your life a misery in the past year.

You will definitely wish,

even more desperately that the whole thing was over and done with,

that no-one else in the family gets it 

because the thought of your children or husband going through the same hell

is unimaginable.

Then you will get over the worse of it

but wonder at how long it takes you to recover.

That 14 days later, you still lack appetite (and still don't want coffee)

That you never appreciate your good health enough when you have it.

Still, considering that people willingly inject toxins into their skin to get rid of wrinkles

or consume tablets that stops them digesting fat so that it literally leaks out their back end

or still go to solariums for a tan even knowing of an increased risk of skin cancer,

there could be a market for this, couldn't there?